English – Reading
At Eldon Primary School we believe that the teaching of reading is integral to a child’s understanding and appreciation of the world around them; a platform that allows our children to see beyond what they know, share in cultural experiences and develop the vocabulary they need to effectively express themselves. Our reading curriculum strives to foster a lifelong love of reading. We cultivate the behaviours that they will need to be discerning readers as they read frequently and widely using self-regulation strategies and discuss what they read.
This curriculum is delivered through synthetic phonics, a linked approach to shared and guided reading, home reading, reading across the curriculum, regular opportunities for independent reading and hearing quality texts read aloud every day. All of these are essential components as they offer the range of opportunities needed to develop fluent, enthusiastic and critical readers.
It is important that children are motivated to read at home regularly; when their reading opportunities increase, so does their fluency and stamina which in turn increases their enjoyment of reading. Therefore, the link between children’s motivation to read and reading for pleasure is reciprocal. Furthermore, we know that reading pleasure is beneficial not only for not only reading outcomes, but for wider learning enjoyment and mental wellbeing.
Thus, we work hard to foster a love of independent reading and build communities of engaged readers. We understand the significance of parents and carers in supporting their children to develop both word reading and comprehension skills so we endeavour to build a home-school partnership which enables parents and carers to have the confidence to support their children with reading at home. Reading is at the very heart of our curriculum. We are committed to promoting a love for reading and not only giving children opportunities to read in English lessons, but in the wider curriculum too.
Our aims for reading are to:
- Instil children with a love of reading that lasts for their lifetime, share with them an enthusiasm for children’s literature and help children to recognise the value of reading as a life skill.
- Encourage children to become enthusiastic and reflective readers by introducing them to good quality books, from a variety of cultures and in a range of different styles and formats.
- Develop our children’s understanding of a variety of text types including non-fiction, fiction, poetry and drama.
- Develop children’s confidence, fluency, and independence when reading for different purposes.
- Develop children’s abilities to reflect on and have an interest in what they have read and the language and punctuation choices made by the author.
- Use drama and role-play, where appropriate, to immerse children in the text.
- Use drama and role-play, where appropriate, to immerse children in the text.
At Eldon Primary we endeavour to create a love for literacy. We want every child to leave our school with the skills of an excellent writer who has the ability to write with fluency and able to embed basic skills in order to widen their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. This will allow them to develop their writing so they are able to articulate, communicate and organise their ideas for the intended audience and purpose.
- That they have an author’s voice.
- They think about the impact they want their writing to have on the reader and know how they will achieve this.
- Children have a sophisticated bank of vocabulary and an excellent knowledge of writing techniques to extend details or description.
- They can structure and organise their writing to suit the genre they are writing and include a variety of sentence structures.
- Children are able to display excellent transcription skills that ensure their writing is well presented, punctuated, spelt correctly and neat.
- Children are able to re-read, edit and improve their writing so every piece of writing they produce is to the best of their ability and better than the last.
Throughout their time at Eldon Primary, children develop their skills by exploring a whole range of different genres, with a focus on exploring a range of models of excellence and using these to guide the drafting and editing process. It is important to note that we not only develop a real enjoyment of writing in English lessons but in all subjects across the curriculum. We expect the highest standards of writing every time a child writes in any subject.
The Talk for Writing initiative at Eldon Primary School will be driven by the Eldon Writing Strategy to ensure smooth implementation and act as a facilitative model to ensure fidelity and raise standards in writing across school.